The facility’s opening will support the growth of London's technology ecosystem, which is set to experience a multi-billion-pound technology boom, according to a new study by Development Economics.
"Cities around the world are on the cusp of a technology revolution that could drive substantial economic growth," said Jeff Tapley, EMEA managing director at Digital Realty.
"The opening of our new facility in the Digital Docklands underscores Digital Realty's commitment to supporting the technology revolution in London. Businesses can rely on our secure platform to connect to and deliver the critical technology they need to succeed, from AI to IoT, from one city and country to anywhere in the world in order to efficiently grow and scale."
The Digital Realty-commissioned Digital Capitals Index: London study examines the value that innovative technologies will deliver to the city's economy over the next decade through new jobs, businesses, industries and efficiencies in public services.
The report focuses on four of the most widely discussed technology innovations: artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), 5G and blockchain.
The study found that AI (£1.99bn), IoT (£3.09bn), 5G (£0.13bn) and blockchain (£1.04bn) are currently on track to contribute £6.25 billion to the London economy in 2019. IoT contributed nearly half (49%) of the total primarily through improvements in operational efficiencies and AI was the second most impactful through applications such as combating money laundering.
The contribution of these four technologies is expected to increase to £24.29 billion by 2029 with AI: (£10.46bn); IoT: (£6.44bn); 5G: (£4.29bn); blockchain (£3.09bn). The most spectacular growth is expected to come from 5G, with its economic contribution to London's economy set to increase 3,000% over the next decade, from £130 million to £4.29 billion, as 5G becomes the foundation for the deployment of many other innovative, data-led technologies.
Digital Realty's investment in the Digital Docklands is designed to underpin the growing importance of data-led technologies to London's economy by ensuring the city's businesses have the right digital infrastructure to adopt and deliver on complex technology, wherever and whenever they need. The Digital Docklands campus is highly connected, offering the high-speed global connectivity required to deliver on the promise of AI, IoT, 5G and Blockchain.
Data centre M&A deals were up 18% from the first half of 2018, closing 52 new deals in that time frame, continuing a strong trend of growth over the last four years. These figures came from Synergy Research Group, which show that number of deals that closed in the first half of the year exceeded the number of deals that closed in the whole of 2016. 2019 is set to be another record year for data centre M&A with eight more deal having closed since the beginning of July. In addition, 14 more deals have been agreed with formal closure pending.
Over the past couple of months, Digital Realty expanded IBM Cloud capabilities in Sydney, Australia, named Jeffrey Tapley as managing director of EMEA, bought land in Seoul and Frankfurt to build new data centres, as well as constantly supporting its clients in their journey to the cloud.
